My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Condition: well-printed
impression with strong colour. The sheet has wormholes, losses on the right
side and border, old repairs to the lower-left corner and is laid onto a
support sheet to stabilise the restorations.

I am selling
this exceptionally beautiful and rare woodcut by one of the most famous of the landscape
artists of the Ukiyoe school for AU$404 (currently
US$306.10/EUR288.82/GBP244.66 at the time of posting this listing) including
postage and handling to anywhere in the world.

If you are
interested in purchasing this woodcut that is from the same series that
inspired the Impressionists such a Van Gogh who interpreted numbers 30 and 58
in oil studies, please contact me (oz_jim@printsandprinciples.com) and I will
send you a PayPal invoice to make the payment easy.

This print has been sold

I am amazed at
the number of colour variations that there are in the printing of this image.
For example, British Museum’s copy is like a celebration of yellow and
yellow-green, another I found was biased to ochre whereas here the bias is to
blue-green. This is fascinating to me as each colour changes how the landscape
is perceived in terms of humidity and the time of day portrayed. In this
impression I sense a pending storm as the cool blue bias leans to dark tones broken
with patches of light.

Regarding which
is the “right’ choice of colours, I would normally be guided to the way the
title cartouche is treated: if there are gradations in the background colour (i.e.
“bokashi”) then I would believe that this was the artist’s choice but none of
the colour variants—including the BM’s impression—has the tell-tale attribute
in the cartouche. What is certain is that this print is from the time of
publication from the original woodblock and is not a reprint from recut plates.